Support for television coverage of the legislative process among state legislators: A comparison of Iowa, Utah, and Florida

Abstract

The amount of media coverage of state legislatures varies across the 50 states, as do levels of public interest and citizen information about state legislative affairs. In order to assess the attitudes of those elected officials who would be most directly affected by opening up the political process to greater media coverage, survey data were collected from state legislators in Iowa, Utah, and Florida. Representatives and senators from these three geographically disparate states were asked to indicate their level of support for gavel‐to‐gavel coverage of their respective state legislatures. The findings of this exploratory study indicate that this type of media coverage is well supported in two of the three states, but that the reasons for support differ considerably. This diversity indicates the need for further investigation, in additional state settings, of the dynamics of intrastate politics in this area of public policy.